I am Sophie, a Swedish woman by birth but English by adoption. I have a little mud hotel in the beautiful and ancient West African town of Djenne, Mali. WWW.HOTELDJENNEDJENNO.COM Because of unstable political
situation, tourism has ground to a halt. Hotel still open! But hotel staff mainly working in Bogolan studio now: www.malimali.org check out our fab online shop!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

What are they waiting for?

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has told a meeting in the Ivory Coast that ‘the deployment of African soldiers is now a priority.’.But Mali’s neighbouring nations are slow in coming to the recue. France had been obliged to send in troops "very, very rapidly otherwise there would be no more Mali".said Fabius. This is probably true. So why is it taking so long for the ECOWAS troops to arrive?
So far only a fraction -100- of the promised 3500 troops have arrived: ‘The first contingents of Togolese and Nigerian troops arrived in Bamako on Thursday. Nigerien and Chadian forces were massing in Niger, Mali's neighbor to the east.’ Said Reuters a couple of hours ago.